M&G acquires Swiss impact firm responsAbility Investments

M&G today announced that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in responsAbility Investments, a Zurich-headquartered impact investing firm focussed on private debt and private equity across emerging markets.

M&G has agreed to acquire 90% of the $3.7bn (€3.3bn) firm’s issued share capital and said it expected to acquire the remaining 10% “in due course”.

M&G is acquiring 100%, the 10% is mostly a technicality around employee shareholders, and just a matter of time. That means indeed that Christian Super agreed to sell as well.

It also said the acquisition was in line with its strategy to grow its sustainable investment capabilities and become a leader in impact investing.

“responsAbility brings leading capabilities in impact investment to M&G, which will help us accelerate our ambition to place sustainability at the heart of our investment process, and further expands M&G’s international operations, particularly with respect to asset sourcing and origination,” said Jack Daniels, chief investment officer at M&G.

“There is strong and growing demand for impact and sustainable investment products from our clients. The combination of responsAbility’s specialist capabilities in this area and our scale, investment breadth and global distribution reach represents a very powerful proposition.”

One of responsAbility’s shareholders has been Australian pension fund Christian Super, which announced the acquisition of a “significant minority shareholding” in 2019, becoming the impact asset manager’s first international shareholder.

A spokesperson for responsAbility told IPE that Christian Super had also agreed to sell, with the remaining 10% of share capital not yet acquired by M&G due to “mostly a technicality around employee shareholders”.

According to responsAbility, it has invested more than $11bn in private assets across emerging markets since it was founded in 2003.

responsAbility’s 200 employees will join M&G on completion of the deal. M&G said that given responsAbility’s standing it would retain its brand identity.

The business will continue under the day-to-day management of its existing team, led by chief executive officer Rochus Mommartz.

He said: “We are excited to join forces with M&G, as this will bring our vision for impact investing to the next level.

“M&G’s financial strength, distribution network and its strong commitment to sustainability will accelerate our endeavours to meet the massive unmet demand in developing countries and the needs for climate finance.”

The news of M&G’s acquisition comes after Allianz Global Investors yesterday announced the creation of a dedicated private markets impact investment unit, bringing together existing teams and a new impact management and measurement approach.

In other impact investing-related news, BlueMark, a provider of impact verification services, today announced that it had raised $3.75m in total funding from the Ford Foundation, Radicle Impact, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Tipping Point Fund on Impact Investing.

It said it would use the funding to help expand its verification services across different industries and geographies.

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